The adventures of Trevor and Melissa, as he learns to cook and she learns to share the kitchen.

Chocolate Chunk [Pancake] Cookies

A cleaver is an awesome tool for chocolate cutting

Today I fixed our oven. It was simple to do, all I did was connect a loose wire in the breaker box, but given the fact that 2 separate oven repair men failed to figure out the problem I felt pretty good about having diagnosed and repaired it myself. Tonight was one of Melissa’s semi-weekly “girls’ night out” events, so the girl’s and I decided to make a night of baking some cookies. I quickly realized we were out of chocolate chips, but after a quick call to Melissa I discovered the magic of cutting chunks of chocolate off a large brick she had stashed away in a cabinet.

Yes the call went something like this:

“Did you know we are out of chocolate chips?”“Yes”“But I wanted to make chocolate chip cookies”“There is a large block of chocolate in the top cabinet”“So then I have to make chips myself?”“Yes”“Oh, ok”“Have fun…”

Look! I’m using a butter warmer for warming butter

The next call went about the same and so on and so forth. He called me about 5 times for various ingredients and their locations. It was cute but a bit irritating since I was driving.

A few more phone calls later I had everything I needed and was well on my way. The girls were so excited it was incredibly hard to keep them from eating all the cookie dough. The trouble was, the recipe I used is intended to create chewy cookies. The concept is generally that the cookies have more brown sugar and when you bake them the dough should be cold so they don’t flatten out before they begin to rise.

At this stage everything was still looking good

This recipe also called for creaming the butter by first melting it and then mixing sugar into it with a paddle. Between the melting of the butter and the friction of the creaming, the resulting dough took ages to cool down. We became impatient after playing an hour or so of Zelda, and decided to just go for it.

Ahh impatience, the downfall of a cook.

Aurora couldn’t contain her excitement

At this point the dough was probably not cold enough, but it wasn’t molten sugar anymore either. I gave the girls each a small bowl of the dough to keep them at bay, and I dished out the majority of the dough onto parchment laid onto 2 half-sized bun pans. The girl’s didn’t really have the appetite for cookie dough they thought they would, and returned the bowls only partially eaten within a couple of minutes. I think it’s a good thing that their tolerance for sugar is low enough that they know when to call it quits, but I also suspected that the dough just wasn’t that tasty when not ice cold.

Probably because of the baking soda it has a nasty tang to it. I never like cookie dough with baking soda in it. Yuck!

These cookies left my confidence a bit deflated

Once the oven was at 375ºF I loaded the pans in and returned to playing Zelda. After 7.5min I came to rotate the pans and found the cookies had flattened out considerably. Realizing I had reached the point of no return, I put the fact that I jumped the gun out of my mind and rotated the pans as if all was well. 7.5min later I pulled the pans out and found the cookies were so flat and thin, well – it was comical. The girls passed out before the cookies cooled down. I struggled to brush what cookie dough they had consumed off their teeth before they collapsed.

Well at least they got their teeth brushed but the cookies were more than just a “little flattened out”, they were puddles. Guess he learned his lesson lol.

The cookies are tasty, in an odd sort of way. I’m glad our oven is working now, but I look forward to going back to baking with Melissa’s direct supervision until I’m ready to take my training wheels off.